


ex astris, scientia

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 01:30:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: “You wouldn’t last a week in Starfleet.”“Bet?”(Or: Sara Lance never thought she would have joined Starfleet after his sister's accident, but her unwillingness to back down from a challenge, puts her on a new path. Where she's going to meet people that will change her world (for the better), and maybe even work together to save all of Earth along the way.)





	ex astris, scientia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllisonSwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllisonSwan/gifts).



> for maii (who said star trek: beyond was a rom com) and for gabbi (who enabled me), i hope you two enjoy this. it's not too shippy on either side, though we know in ""two movies"" when we get to the rom com one the triumvirate will all fall properly in love (with sara, while rip and ava refuse to touch each other with a ten foot poll because thats a hate crime) but i digress. i hope y'all enjoy this, happy christmas(?)

1

“You can do better than this.” 

“I’m pretty content where I am.”

“Really? In a cell?” 

“Started from the bottom, now I’m technically still at the bottom.” 

“Sara-”

“They’re going to release me in the morning. They always do.”

She hadn’t expected to get caught. Something that she would have to be more careful about next time. These shipyards had all sorts of shadowy figures in them usually, Starfleet more than happy to pay a quick buck to anyone willing to work on putting their ships together, or work at the bar that all the workers went to when they got off.

Well, it was good for Sara.

Usually. 

She was able to get information, the sort of information that was going to help her get out there one day, beyond the confines of Earth. It just was going to take a bit, and after her last off Earth venture - a colonizing expedition that had turned into something far worse - Sara was willing to take her time and be careful. 

The fact that this time that information might have come from a less than credible source was a fluke, and technically stealing from Starfleet was a serious crime as far as the Federation was concerned - well, she couldn't really be blamed for that.

Sara, at least, had a little bit of luck on her side. 

“That’s not a good thing.” 

She stares past him, at the mirror behind him, the one that the other Starfleet officers are no doubt watching her from behind. Probably already whispering around her, wondering how the  _ famous  _ Captain Queen knew the girl trying to steal the parts off their ship. 

“When did you grow up, Ollie,” she says, finally turning back to him. Giving that familiar old smile, the one that used to let her get away with so much when they were younger. Living with all the other kids whose parents were up in the sky.

The two of them, Laurel, and Tommy. 

It had been easier times back then. 

Better times. 

At least for a little while. 

“Around the same time you didn’t,” he says, adjusting the lapels of his Starfleet uniform. Officer’s black. It was a good look, she could at least admit that. “You know Laurel wouldn’t have wanted this life for you.” 

“Well, she’s not here to judge me so.” 

“She didn’t die for you too just-”

“Laurel’s not dead,” Sara says sharply, cutting Oliver off. “She’s missing, sucked into a black hole, but plenty of people go through black holes and don't die..”

The sympathetic look on his features does not suit him. They’d both lost people over the years, too many to count, and more often than not the fault of Starfleet. Losing Laurel had been - she could still remember it so clearly, having been so eager to join Starfleet and follow in Laurel’s footsteps. Taking a different track, with different end goals, so she wasn’t exactly in her sister’s shadow but still -

And then it had all ended so quickly. 

The news report. 

The Lieutenant that took charge of her ship after her captain’s death, driving it into the traitor’s ship, and pushing them both through the black hole. Neither ship to ever be seen again.

They called her the savior of Earth.

There was statue of Laurel at the Starfleet Academy in Starling City, which was one of the many reasons why Sara had been quick to decide against ever going to the Academy. 

“Do you really believe that?”

“I have to.” 

There’s a complicated look on his face, one that Sara does not dwell on. “If you join Starfleet, in a few years maybe you could have a ship of your own, and you could look for her?”

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m working on a ship, and I’ve heard of people looking for merc’s, that would get me out there and-”

“Starfleet could help.”

“Bullshit.” 

There used to be a time where he would have laughed back at that. 

They’ve both aged beyond their years recently. 

“You’re right.” 

“I am?”

“You wouldn’t be a good fit for Starfleet. Too reckless, never learned how to settle down; while the rest of us were moving on you were out learning how to make a good martini.”

“I’ll have you know I make the  _ best  _ martini the Midwest has ever seen.”

“You wouldn’t last a week in Starfleet.”

A part of her knows what this is, rationally she does. It’s reverse psychology. It’s a trick.

But Sara’s never been able to back down from a dare, and she’s not going to start now.

“Bet?”

There’s something satisfying about it a moment later, getting let out of the handcuffs, walking down the hall not back to a cell to sleep in for the night, but out of the station. Sure, her release may have been contingent on accepting an offer to join Starfleet, but -

As much as she hated to admit it.

Oliver was probably right; this was going to be her best chance at finding Laurel.

And if that meant suffering through Starfleet well, it couldn’t be  _ that  _ bad right. 

She flashes mischievous smiles at the other cadets as she slips on board the ship, noting that only one of them actually bothers to smile back, and making a mental note to track that girl down later and demand that they be friends. Most of them are already whispering about her, no doubt having heard about the  _ incident  _ by now. 

Fuck them.

Sara didn’t need them.

All she needed was a ship capable of warp speed. 

She settles down in the one open seat, buckling in instinctively, preparing for the journey to Starling City. She’s so caught up in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t notice the person sitting next to her.

Not until he speaks with a voice that sounds just  _ this  _ side of drunk, (a tone Sara knows all too well from her years of bartending), “I may throw up on you.”

Sara twists in her to seat to take in the man next to her, his beat up leather jacket, the circles under his eyes. He looks about the way that Sara feels. “I mean, same?”

That seems to be the right answer because there for a moment, he smiles back at her, an almost thankful smile. It’s a nice smile, though she can already tell it’s a rare sort of thing. 

“Rip Hunter.”

“Sara Lance.” 

  
  
  


2

Technically, it’s not cheating.

If the whole system is a cheat. 

Sure, maybe she’d gotten Zari to write the code to hack the test, and maybe there was no way crashing a Starship into a giant meteor would ever work in their favor, but it was all in the parameters of the test. 

The code was all there in theory. 

They really were just asking for her to cheat. 

“Fire two photon torpedoes, that should be just enough,” Sara says, making her fingers into a gun shape and pointing them at the screen. 

Rip, who still somehow hasn’t gotten with the program twists around in his seat to glare at her, “Sara, that won’t work, their shields are still up, the last time you-”

“Who is the Captain here?”

Rip, pointedly ignores her, “Sara-”

“Oh, yes,” she twirls her chair to smile up at the cameras watching them. 

After all, this wasn’t her first time taking this test. 

Or even her second. 

“I am,” Sara replies, smiling this time for the instructors she knows to be watching them, “Tell medbay to prepare to receive all hostages.” 

There’s a grumble from him, and Sara knows they’re going to have a  _ talk  _ about this later, but if he hadn’t learned in the past three years of them being at the Academy together that Sara always had a plan, then that was on him. Sure they weren’t always the  _ best  _ of plans. 

But they were still plans. 

“Where was I? Photon torpedos?”

Distantly she registers Zari’s pleased, “Yes, Captain,” as she turns her chair back around just in time to watch the program complete itself to success. 

There’s a ripple of noise from her fellow cadets following the screen displaying their success, shock mixed with pleasure mixed with disbelief. A feeling that Sara could understand. 

After all, she’d scarcely believed it was possible, until three drinks into the night Zari had started talking about how she’d been recruited to help code the test and well - 

“There we have it,” Sara says making sure that her voice sounds just the right level of confident, not too cocky, but  _ just  _ enough so that they know. “Our ship undamaged, for the most part, the crew is all alive which I think what really counts here, and we can now start the rescue of  _ all  _ the hostages. You're welcome.” 

The shock from before turns into a ripple of applause from the other cadets. 

Or from most of them. 

Zari meets her gaze with a wildly successful one, having the inside knowledge of what they just did. While Rip’s is more hesitant and concerned. He’s going to get worry lines if he keeps that up, something Sara points out to him far too often. 

“This calls for victory drinks,” she calls out to the gathered group, to avoid Rip’s concern, “First round is on me, your more glorious and generous captain.”

They’re exiting the testing chamber when she sees them. The gathered officers that were in charge of the exam, all staring at the screens in various levels of disbelief. 

All except one, whose eyes follow Sara as she moves out of testing chamber. Sara feels something in her gaze, something scrutinizing, something that makes her more uncomfortable than she would like to admit. 

Which is why she quickly turns away from that gaze.

Instead, looping her arm around Rip’s shoulders, “Oh, and by on me, I meant on you but I will pay you back eventually.”

“Why are you like this?”

“Uh, the fuck, you love me, you're welcome?”

They all go out to celebrate. 

Her, Rip, Zari, her roommate Kendra (and Kendra’s two boyfriends Carter and Ray, neither of which really deserve Kendra, though if she’s being honest nobody deserves Kendra), along with a bunch of other people whose faces Sara sort of knows, but all seem to blend together in the haze of victory. 

It doesn’t really matter, not when people keep high fiving her and buying her drinks. 

“You cheated,” Rip says, loud over the pounding music. The concern is back on his face and Sara is two drinks too many into the night to process that. “How did you cheat?”

“You’re jealous that you didn’t figure it out first.” 

“No, I-” 

“It’s okay to be jealous,” Sara says, swaying a bit too close into Rip, close enough that their noses bump together. “It’s cute when you’re jealous.”

“I’m concerned,” he corrects.

Which Sara knew that. She knew that he was going to feel that way since before she even took the test a third time. Which was why she hadn’t included him in on their plan.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

The night becomes a blur at some point after that. 

And Sara learns what the worst that could happen is promptly the next morning. 

When she wakes up to over twenty missed messages on her comm - from Oliver, for her usually distant parents, from her professors, as well one from the  _ Dean of Students  _ that looks far too important to be good news.

For a moment she ignores all of those, taking a moment to respond to Rip’s message asking if she made it home safe.

Sara replies to that one first, before finally opening the bigger and much more serious looking one.

It only takes a few words -  _ academic dishonesty, tribunal, a council of your peers  _ \- “Fuck me.” 

There’s not much time to prep for the hearing. 

Though Rip tries to give her advice, she waves him off, “Not my first academic dishonesty hearing. Wouldn't be your first either.” 

“This is different,” Rip insists.

Though she doesn’t realize quite how different until they’re all there together. Every Cadet and every Professor and every Admiral or Captain that just happened to be in Starling at the time.

And okay, maybe cheating on the Kobayashi Maru was a big deal after all.

Who knew. 

Sara blows a strand of loose hair out of her face, as she listens to the Admiral reading out the lists of her  _ infractions _

“I believe I have the right to face my accuser.” 

“You do.” 

There’s a pounding in her head, a lingering hangover that had turned into something worse as the day had progressed, but she turns to look over her shoulder, ignoring the pain for a moment to scan the crowd.

Out past the familiar faces of her friends, and instead settled on the one figure that rises out of the herd of red cadet uniforms and black officer uniforms. 

It was the woman she had seen before, after she had left the simulation. The one with her blonde hair pulled neatly back away from her face in a tight bun, but now Sara can see that with her hair pulled back, the slight points of her ears were revealed. 

A vulcan then. 

She’d heard there was a half-Vulcan professor at the Academy. Kendra had taken a linguistics course with her; of course she had failed to mention how attractive the woman was, but that was an oversight on Kendra’s part. 

There’s something stern about her features, and if Sara was being honest she wouldn’t mind a nice  _ talking down  _ from a Vulcan professor, hell it felt like something right out of one of her fantasies, but she’d rather they were doing this in the privacy of an office rather than in front of all of the Academy. 

But since that wasn’t an option. 

“Commander Sharpe has programmed the test for the last four years,” one of the admirals says, putting a name to the face that does not seem to show any emotion when her eyes meet Sara’s. 

“You programmed the test to be unwinnable,” Sara says, “Does it really count as cheating if the test itself is a cheat?”

“Obviously,” she replies as if it should be.

Unquestionably so.

Sara doesn’t bother hiding her annoyance, “Well, that sucks, because I don’t believe in no win scenarios.” 

There’s a light noise from the gathered crowd behind her, agreement or disapproval,  it’s hard to tell. Hard to care, when she can see the slight flicker of something on those Vulcan features. 

“Then not only did you violate the rules,” Commander Sharpe says, “You failed to understand the purpose of the test.”

Sara scoffs.

What they really needed to consider here was that her going outside of the lines  _ was  _ the lesson. Not that anybody would listen to her. 

“And what’s that?” Sara asks. “That Vulcans don’t have any sense of creativity.”

Commander Sharpe ignores her. “You of all people should know, Cadet Lance, that a captain cannot cheat death.” 

“I of all people?”

“You sister, Lieutenant Laurel Lance, assumed command of her vessel, before being killed in action-”

“My sister’s not dead!”

There’s silence in the room following that. So silent that one could almost hear a pin drop. No one seemingly willing to say a world. She can see Oliver among the other Captains shift in his seat, probably going to speak up in her defense, and she’s all too ready to insist that she doesn’t need his interference.

But she never gets the chance too, none of them do, because in that silence the sound of heels against a tile floor cuts through the room, as a flustered Yeoman goes straight up the Admirals. And anything they might have had to say about Sara’s test results are forgotten in the following commands for everyone to report to their ships in the hanger. 

“Who was that pointy eared bastard,” Sara asks, falling in step with Rip as they both head to the hanger. 

“I don’t know, but I like her.” 

  
  
  


3

Saying,  _ “I told you so,” _ after Ava just watched her mother’s whole planet get destroyed was probably not one of Sara’s best decisions. In fact, it may very well have been one of her worst, but she did warn them.

Warn Admiral Bennet, who was now no doubt dead.

Warn the whole crew, because she’d known  _ exactly  _ what this was.

A lightning storm in space wasn’t a natural disaster; it was advanced Starfleet tech that everyone liked to pretend didn’t exist. That was why Darhk was back. She had seen him on the screen, and he had seen her, and maybe that had made things worse. 

But it didn’t matter now because a planet was destroyed and - “His next destination is Earth.”

“You don’t know that,” Ava says rising from the Captain’s chair. 

Sara still doesn’t like her, she’s about pretty sure that she never will, especially not if she continues making these  _ logical  _ decisions, when the real answer, the right answer, is so clearly near. 

“We need to go and protect Earth.” 

“We’re just one ship,” Rip points out from by her side.

And she doesn’t have it in her to resist turning and shooting him a betrayed look, because of all the people that she thought would be on her side, Rip was one of them.

Rip had always been on her side.

But now there is regret that lined his features, and sorrow and loss, and she can remember all too clearly how he used to talk before about all the mistakes he’s made. About the family he’s left behind on Earth, the son that sends him letters the old fashioned way, for sentimentality’s sake, a son that will die if they let Darhk suck Earth into up into one of his black holes like he just did to Vulcan. 

Suddenly, the urge to fight rises up in her, stronger than ever before. 

“Maybe, you’re okay losing your planet but-”’

“That’s enough Cadet Lance.” 

“-Some of us aren’t so willing to just roll over and let the bad guys walk all over us.”

She watches as Ava pinches up at the bridge of her nose, “You’re not even supposed to be here.” She says it once, in a tone almost like exasperation, if Vulcan’s could feel that way.

“I need you to listen to me.”

The second time she says it sounds like a realization, “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

They’re face to face now, inches apart and Sara has half the mind to cross that space and punch her. 

Maybe the jolt would bring her back to reality.

Though she doesn’t get to chance to, because Ava moves first, quick as lightning, and one second Sara’s readying another insult and the next.

The next.

She’s waking up in a escape pod, while a crash landing alarm goes off.

No, being right is not as satisfying as it should be. 

Especially when Admiral Bennet is no doubt dead, a whole  _ planet  _ has apparently been sucked into one of Darhk’s black holes, meanwhile Sara is marooned and able to do nothing about it. 

She presses the standard Starfleet issue recording device, “Stardate 2258.42 or .43, fuck it I don’t know. Acting Captain Sharpe,  Ava - I’m going to call her Ava from now on, I bet that would annoy the shit out of her.” Sara chuckles to herself, as she continues navigating down the halls of the base she’s found. At least, Ava hadn’t marooned her on a completely uninhabited space rock.

Though she wouldn’t have put it past her. 

Actually if anything that would have seemed  _ more  _ like the vibe Sara had gotten from the other woman.  

“ _ Ava  _ has marooned me on Delta Vega, in which I’m pretty sure is a violation of some Starfleet protocol, it’s in the 40s… maybe the 50s… About treatment of prisoners on board a starships. I’m pretty sure it’s because she just doesn’t like me but-” 

“Is someone there?”

Sara stops in the middle of her recording, wishing that the female Starfleet uniforms had pockets, or ranks stripes, or actually anything useful to protect against the cold of this icy planet. 

If she made it back - no when - she was going to file a report to the committee of Admirals about sexism, and skirt length, and a whole lot of things.

But first things first came appearing cool and harmless to the person currently shining a flashlight down at her in the abandoned hallway. 

“I come in peace,” Sara offers. 

And there’s a snicker from the other side, as the man steps into the light, burly jacket covering his body, but she can still make out the red starfleet uniform underneath. “The real question, is do you come with food?” 

On the walk back down the hallway to the proper base he introduces himself as Jefferson Jackson -  _ call me, Jax  _ \- and insists on giving Sara his jacket. Which is heavy and smells of grease, but is a lot better than the thin Starfleet medical uniform that she had been wearing before.

Something she’d been thankful for Rip giving her at the time to sneak her onboard the USS Waverider, but something that didn’t do nearly enough during the fight on (former planet) Vulcan and the long walk from her pod to the base that her sensors had picked up on. 

“This is Mick,” Jax says when they reach the main control room. 

“Did she bring food?”

“No dice,” Sara says, with an exaggerated frown and two thumbs down.

“Beer?”

“I fucking wish.”

“Then what’s the point-”

“Mick, be nice.”

“So I was abandoned here,” Sara says, sounding only a little bit offended, as she props herself up take a seat on one of the many display screens. It doesn’t look important, and well, sitting up on surfaces where Sara could swing her legs back and forth without them touching the ground made her feel better. “And to be honest, I’ve had a very long day, and if the Damien Darhk wasn’t about to open up another black hole and destroy Earth, I’d be happy to just hang out here with you two lovely gentlemen. But sadly, you know, Earth being destroyed and all that jazz-”

“Wait - I remember hearing about this guy. Didn’t he die already, some big black hole, five years ago? They got this statue of this girl-”

“Yeah, I know,” Sara says cutting him off.

Because getting into all of  _ that  _ is really not something she has the time or the energy for, but hey, at least the silver lining was that if Darhk could have escaped wherever the black hole sent him too, then surely Laurel could have too. 

“Except he’s not and he’s about to destroy Earth, so I kinda need to get back to my ship, A-S-A-P,” Sara spells each letter out, counting up on her fingers, “So, which one of you fine gentlemen could help me out with that.” 

There’s a long pause.

The two of them looking at each other in some sort of silent conversation. 

As if they’re weighing whether saving Earth was worth it or not.

And well, Sara couldn’t really blame them.

It was kind of a fucked up planet that never did her much good, but nowhere really did Sara good so, the standards were already incredibly low.

Plus it was  _ her  _ planet. 

They must decide on something because finally Jax speaks up, “You ever heard of Admiral Stein’s prized beagle?”

“Yeah, I know the dog, why?” 

  
  
  


4

They make it on the Waverider, which really is the main accomplishment.

Sure Jax nearly drowns, and Mick punches one of the security officers - the  _ pretty  _ one, his words not hers - but really as far as Sara was concerned this was a success.

They were all alive.

They were on board the Waverider.

The  _ shock - _ because that is definitely shock on Ava’s features, and weren’t Vulcans supposed to be emotionless?- is only a little bit satisfying, when the security officers drop them off on the bridge.

At least, Rip is there to give her his patented  _ disappointed, but glad you’re alive  _ look, which she had to admit she had been starting to miss. Even if it had just been for a few hours. 

“Did you miss me?”

“No,” he tells her. Though his eyes say something different. 

“How did you get on board this ship, we’re traveling at warp speed, that shouldn’t be possible.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a genius, Ava? You figure it out.” 

She was right, the name did annoy her.

“As acting captain of this vessel, I order you-” 

“Kinky.”

“Sara, don’t push it,” Rip’s warning falls on two sets of deaf ears.

“Look  _ acting captain _ -”

Ava ignores her, focusing on Jax and Mick instead, “Are you two members of Starfleet?”

Mick shrugs. A not answer, and Sara wants to high five him. At least someone here remembered that they were supposed to be on her side.

Whereas Jax looks just a little bit intimidated by Ava, or it might be that he’s shaking from the cold seeing as he’s still soaking wet, “Can I get a towel?”

“Under penalty of court martial, I order you to tell me how you beamed aboard this vessel.”

“Is that a no on the towel? Because I am dripping on your bridge; this is safety hazard.”

“Don’t answer her,” Sara tells Jax. 

Though he was already doing a pretty good job of that himself.

“You will answer me.”

“Look I’d rather not take sides.” 

Ava’s got that look again, the hint of emotions just there, and that’s what she needs. It’s what they had figured out on Delta Vega, if a Captain was emotionally compromised they could be relieved of duty without it being considered a mutiny.

Which, okay, yes this was a mutiny. 

But Sara would really rather  _ that  _ didn’t go down on her record. 

“Do you really not feel anything,” Sara asks, pulling Ava’s attention back to her. “I mean, your planet was just destroyed, we all watched it happen. I mean, your mom died, and I guess I get it, I’ve got a distant mother too; she’s on the Central Space Station in Quadrant Gamma doing science shit or whatever, but you know, mine’s alive and yours is super dead so, I don’t know, I just thought you’d be sad.”

“If you’re presuming that these experiences in any way impede my ability to command this ship, you’re mistaken.” 

“Did you see his ship? Did you see what he did? This is one of those no-win situations you tried to teach me about. How does it feel?”

“I will not have you lecture me on the merits of emotion.” 

“Right, because you have none?”

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Ava says, and it’s a warning, and Sara knows just where to push.

She steps into her space first this time, makes the first contact pushing up against the woman, “You must really feel nothing. It must not even compute for you.” 

Getting punched in the face is not nearly as satisfying as she had thought it would be. 

Sure, she knew it was coming.

Had hoped it was coming. 

But it was never really a good feeling. 

She doesn’t have to fight back, because a second punch doesn’t come, because Ava pulls back. That still wild angry look on her face, her knuckles split with green blood pooling there, and that’s all it takes.

Ava’s voice falls back into that same emotionless tone after a moment, when she seems to compose herself, carefully flexing her fingers down by her side. 

Relaxing the fist that had hit Sara moments before. 

“I’m relieving myself of duty, as I have been emotionally compromised.” 

She’s won.

But victory does not taste as sweet as it should. 

The silence that lingers in on the bridge afterwards when Ava leaves does her no better. 

It is only broken by Rip cursing a moment later, “Oh bollocks.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” she tells him, shooting two finger guns in his direction. 

“Sara, we have no captain and no first officer now, we’re not exactly in the best-” 

Though he falls silent, when she settles in the chair. 

The same way she had sat during the Kobayashi Maru test, back straight, confident. This was what she deserved. 

Even if it was just for a moment. 

“I’m keeping this.” 

There’s a sigh from her left, more resigned than anything else, “Are you sure about this?

“No, but what better option is there?”

  
  
  


5

They come up with a plan to beat Darhk.

Or well, Sara comes up with a plan.

A good plan in her opinion.

Until Zari pipes up, “That plan sucks and is going to get you killed.”

“Yeah,” Nate, the security officer that had arrested and then been punched by Mick, says, “I mean, you can’t go in there alone. That’s how you end up dead.” 

“Nathaniel is right,” their helmswoman, Amaya, chips in.

“I’d rather you didn’t end up dead, after all that care I took at the Academy to keep you alive,” Rip points out. 

She sticks her tongue out at him before turning to listen to the gathered group.

Sara hadn’t realized how opinionated her team was, but they are, and they’ve all got ideas, and they’re all pleasantly shocked that someone is actually listening to them. A sign that Sara is taking as proof that she makes an excellent Captain.

Because listening to her team, that was something important.

Starfleet wasn’t a one man, or one woman, job. It was a team effort, and even though she’d just met over half of these people within the past twenty-four hours, that still seemed to mean something. 

She likes these idiots. 

And no part of her wants them to die. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Rip says, settling down beside her, sitting on the arm of her Captain’s chair. 

“I’ve been winging every major life decision since I was ten years old, Rip,” Sara points out, “What do you think?”

His laugh is something, calm and familiar, and for a moment it feels back like old times. Back at the Academy, when they didn’t have to worry about saving the world, and Damien Darhk, and life was just easier.

So like, a week ago. 

She’s about to say something about that, some sort of  _ started from the bottom  _ joke, but she falls silent, as does most the rest of the bridge, as she takes in the sight of the woman who has reentered the bridge, still in her command golds, a color that Sara now properly wore as well.

They stare at each other for a long moment.

She hadn’t been sure up until now where Ava had gone off to, probably to do Vulcan mediation or something, and the truth was Sara hadn’t really cared. 

Not until now. 

Until she was standing there.

Sara breaks the silence, “Commander Sharpe.” 

A moment later, Ava echoes back, “Captain Lance.”

She wonders briefly where they’re supposed to go from here. 

She doesn’t have to wonder for long, Ava speaking up shortly after, saying, “I’m not going to apologize.”

“Me neither.” 

“Good,” Ava says. “However, I believe I can be assistance.” 

“Is that right?” 

“Darhk’s ship and the weapon he uses, was built by the Vulcan Science Academy, a place that I studied at prior to attending Starfleet-”  _ a place that no longer exists,  _ goes unsaid- “I believe if I can get on that ship, that I can disable it.” 

Well, that changed things. 

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Let’s go save Earth.” 

  
  


+1 

They save Earth. 

Something which probably ought to be celebrated with a lot more pomp and circumstance than it actually is. There’s loss and there’s pain even in the wake of victory. 

And Sara stands underneath Laurel’s statue, and knows that this isn’t the end, that there’s so much more out there. So many more stones to be unturned, planets to be searched - after all, isn’t that the purpose of Starfleet, to find what’s out there and to keep pushing on and on ad infinitum. 

“One day,” she promises to the statue. 

Taking her dress uniform hat off to set it at the base of the statue. 

A silent salute, before she leaves the Academy behind. 

There had been the official ceremony earlier, with all of them standing around, making speeches about how they couldn’t have done it without each other. There had even been a private meeting between Sara and Admiral Thawne following it. A meeting that had left a lot on her mind that she wasn’t one hundred percent sure she was ready to deal with yet.

But for now -

For now there was something more important than all of that.

There was a bar, with her friends, and her commander, and her chief medical officer, and her  _ whole crew _ . 

“To us,” Sara says, standing on the bar top holding her glass up in the air. 

Smiling down on the gathered group of them - Rip with his glass of scotch; Ava with a glass of what Sara was pretty sure was just chocolate milk; Zari looping her arm around their helmswoman, her own glass of champagne slipping from her fingers; even Mick finally getting that beer he had been so looking forward to - to her team. 

“Today, they made us all stand up there, and they called us heroes,” Sara says, “and sure, heroes sounds nice, but you know what sounds better?” 

She waits, for someone, she’s pretty sure it’s Nate to yell, back “What?” before continuing. 

“A five year mission, to explore the galaxy,” Sara tells them. “Fuck being heroes, let’s go become  _ Legends _ .”

 


End file.
